A Year in the Forest

It finally rained today.  Not much only about 1/4 of an inch, but any rain is welcome.  This evening about 6:00 pm I went into the forest.  It was raining, but under the trees the rain had hardly reached the ground, even though it had been raining off and on for at least 12 hours.  Because of the rain, it had cooled off and about the only time I got wet was when I grabbed a small tree for support and shook it.  Overall I came back home dryer than normal.

The forest in the rain is a noisy place.  You can hear the rain hitting the leaves and it sounds like you are in a rain storm, but little if any water is falling around you.  Most of the tree trunks were dry.  The beech were most noticeable – they had streaks running down them where water had run down from up on high.  In the few places where big trees had fallen and opened up forest a little there was evidence of a little more water.

Nature is a amazing thing.  In one place where there is a small depression in the rock at the bottom of a gully, water usually collects and frogs live there.  Over the past couple of weeks this depression has dried up and the frogs were absent.  But water has collected there again and magically the frogs reappeared.  My normal thought was that they had burrowed down in the mud to survive, but there was no mud only rock there.  Who knows where they hid during the dry spell?

Here is a picture taken a couple days ago of some Jack O Lantern mushrooms on the trail.    To say they have now doubled in size would be an understatement.  My tree trunk that sprouted Oyster mushrooms has sprouted them again.    They are about the size of a quarter now, should be ready to pick in a day or two.

One of the things I find interesting in the woods is the number of trees that have been bent in an arch.  Some of these trees are bent all the way down so that the top is now touching the ground and are still alive.  This happens in the woods when a larger tree falls and bends the smaller tree when it falls.  I have included pictures of three of these trees I encounter on a daily basis.        The main trail goes under these trees as is evident in the last photo.

I had the opportunity to go for my walk in the morning.  It is always amazing how different things look in different light.  The major thing I noticed was a large log covered with some white mushroom.  The problem was that it was at the bottom of an almost vertical 60 ft drop.  I took out my binoculars and looked at the mushroom and it was so intriguing that I had to go and look at it.  So I headed back up the trail to get in the gully further on up where it was accessible.  Here is a picture of the gully I had to go down.    I went a couple hundred feet down this until it became a mess of leaves, logs and stones.  After scrambling another 100 feet I finally came to the log with the mushroom.    It was worth the effort.  A beautiful white Pom Pon mushroom and after I got it back home tasty too.  I like it as much as morels and chanterelles.  While talking to my oldest son later, he said with all the edible mushrooms I have been finding, I should start selling them.  I would come more likely doing that if I grew them.  But back to my story.  After finding the mushroom,  I was not home yet.  I still had a couple hundred feet horizontally and 20 feet vertically of leaves, logs and stones to traverse to get out of the gully.  Luckily I did not hurt anything and made it back out with no mishaps.  I do not know how they would have gotten me out of there if I got hurt.

Later that day I took Karen out for a walk and it was very hard to see the mushroom from the ridge top in the different light.  Earlier it jumped out at me as I passed on by.  We did notice that all the water puddles both in the gully and the main stream bed were dry.  There was one little mud puddle we found and it was surrounded with animal tracks.  It has been really dry.  So when we got home we put some buckets out with water for the wild animals.  I imagine they will get well used tonight.  Someday I am going to get an infrared camera so I can watch things like that at night.

As I took my daily walk through the woods today, or should I say my daily mushroom walk, I encountered two good edible mushrooms.  The log from which I harvested the oyster mushrooms earlier has sprouted them again – yum, yum there will be some good eating this week.  I also found a big stump sprouting Sulphur Shelf Mushrooms.  I harvested the Sulphur Shelf mushrooms because the deer like them and often get them before I can.    For the evening meal we had steaks grilled on charcoal and Sulphur Shelf mushrooms sauteed in butter.  I was not expecting to find mushrooms since is it still dry and mushrooms are mostly water.  Oh well, finding them and eating them is too often a harvest of chance.  If you get there the right day, you get em.  The wildlife might get them the next day.  I was hoping ot get some paw-paws but they are not ripe yet.

It is a little cooler today – I am looking forward to cool weather so I can do some real work on the trails.

Not much happened on my walk though the woods today.  I did stop and photograph a small bright orange mushroom a Mycena Leaiana. and I did see the largest animal I have seen in the woods – another human.  I encountered an about 18 year old male walking his dog down the stream bed.  I didn’t run him off but he left quickly after exchanging pleasantries.

Its hot and the bugs a constant annoyance.  I did find out what was causing my ankles to burn, some kind of little bug.  I started putting on bug repellent and fixed the problem.